BoatBanter.com - Abe Lincoln award

If Diogenes makes it to Tacoma, he can put out his lamp when he gets to Thea
Foss Waterway.

We ran down sound to Tacoma to visit the Chihuly glass museum, go out to
dinner, etc. We put it at the Foss Waterway Marina, about 6 blocks from the
museum and only two blocks from the 11th St footbridge to downtown Tac.

I was making the boat fast to the float when my wife went to the office to pay
for a night's moorage. She returned a few mintues later, with a receipt and an
incredulous expression. "They charge $1.60 a foot for overnight moorage here!"
Wow. We don't have the world's biggest boat, not by a very long, long shot, so
we were still under $70 and it wasn't worth moving over, but the Mrs. is a
shrewd businesswoman as well as a CPA, and nothing bugs her like being
overcharged.

Up this way, $1.60 is a lot. Seventy-five cents is pretty common, a buck a foot
is on the high end, and Roche Harbor (ultra posh resort marina) gets $1.30.

We had a wonderful Saturday, and Saturday night. My wife would ocasionally
comment, "$1.60 a foot? Next time we come down here we're going to stay
somewhere else!"

About 0900 today, there was a knock on the pilothouse door. I slid it open to
find a young woman standing on the dock. My first thought was, "She's probably
going to tell us if we're not out of here in an hour she wants another $70." I
was wrong.

"Hello, I had to come down and apologize. We had a new person on the desk
yesterday, and she seriously overcharged you for your slip. In fact, she looked
at the rate for a haul-out, rather than overnight moorage. When you come up to
the office to turn in your gate key, we'll have a refund waiting for you."

That was nice. Reminds me of the time that Abe Lincoln walked through a
blizzard to refund a few cents he overcharged a customer at his little general
store. They already had our money in the till, and it was probably obvious that
we weren't going to make a stink about it, so they simply did the right thing
because it was the right thing to do. It cost them $36, but it bought them a
good reputation.

(The moorage rate turned out to be 60-cents a foot, very competitively priced).